Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

That is one of the maxims we have all learned at an early age.

When we hear of a network executive taking advantage of his (it’s been 98% male) subordinates – whether via abuse or sexual advances, we say- absolute power corrupts.

When Catholic priests and bishops have been found to diddle little boys, we’re certain it’s the corruption of absolute power.

Except…

Like other maxims, we need to reconsider what it is we thought we knew.

Psychological experiments are now demonstrating a slightly different basis.  Power is an amplifier.  We just become more of what we naturally are.

Drs. Adam Galinsky, Joe Magee, Deborah Gruenfeld, Jennifer Whitson, and Katie Liljenquist published the results of their experiments with power (Power reduces the press of the situation: Implications for creativity, conformity, and dissonance) in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  Via 5 experiments, the researchers demonstrated that when we remind folks they are powerful, they become more likely to express their own ideas, instead of conforming to the opinions they hear; they were far more vociferous with their opinions.  Likewise, if they were designated a manager in a negotiating situation, they were far more likely to bargain their own way, rather than employing the style of the other negotiators.

Those experiments built on earlier studies by the team.  Drs. Galinsky, Gruenfeld, and Magee published about 15 years earlier the article ‘From Power to Action’ in the same journal.  This study involved setting up a fan that blew in the subject’s faces.  The annoyance of the fan led the subjects to move the fan, turn it off, or unplug it.  And, that action- to eradicate the annoyance- was more likely if they were asked to recount a time when they had power- jumping from 42 to 69%.

I know.  You are going to say- “But, Roy, What about the Stanford Prison Experiment?”  Where those kids (OK, college students), playing prison guards, dealt with their ‘prisoners’ in most sadistic fashions?

Well, that experiment forgot to qualify a key variable.  Drs. Carnahan and McFarland decided to study what sort of student (or subject) would volunteer for studies of prison life. Their publication, Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment:  Could Participant Self-Selection Have Led to the Cruelty?, provided some interesting details.  The volunteers were a quarter more likely (OK, 26%) to manifest aggressive behaviors and social dominance, demonstrate narcissism (12%) and authoritarian behavior (10%) than those who decided to pass on the study.

In other words, power only corrupts folks who had predilection towards corruption.

It’s critical to discern whether a subject is a giver (generous) or a taker (selfish). As Drs. Chen, Lee-Chai, and Bargh found (Relationship orientation as a moderator of the effects of social power), this set up how folks delegated tasks.  “Givers’ held the long boring tasks and delegated the short, interesting ones.  Oh, wait, so did the selfish subjects.  But, once these folks were placed in a position of influence, that behavior ceased.  The takers had no need to fake their behavior and retained all the quick, exciting work, while delegating the long, boring tasks to others.

Another truism falls apart.

Purim starts tomorrow night!  Do you have a readable copy of the megila?  You can get yours (as translated and expounded by me, of course) for less than a buck right here.